L'Autre Monde 1er aout 2011: Actualité mondiale, économie, banqueroute des nations, 9/11, torture - 2/2

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L'Autre Monde 1er aout 2011: Actualité mondiale, économie, banqueroute des nations, 9/11, torture


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L'Autre Monde 1er aout 2011
120 min / Radio de l'UQAM, CHOQ FM

	Diffusion en direct : Lundi à 15:00h Animation : François Marginean Réalisation : Chronique : Stéphane Poutoire
Archives d'émission

Au programme cette semaine, 1er aout 2011:

- Nos infrastructures s'effondrent et le programme spatial américain est terminé;

- L'impact des activistes et des médias alternatifs est grandissant et indéniable;

- Mise à jour des dossiers des attentats en Norvège et du scandale de Rupert Murdoch;

- Économie - Les États-Unis s'enfoncent dans la dépression et l'Europe coule elle aussi;

- Importantes informations concernant le 9/11 et la torture sont rapportées.

C'est en rendez-vous le lundi dès 15h pour l'émission la plus écoutée de CHOQ FM, la radio officielle de l'Université du Québec à Montréal !

***Hyperliens vers les sources des informations discutées sur l'émission d'aujourd'hui:

En deux parties: dans cette section 2/2 - actualité, dossier Rupert Murdoch, Norvège, 9/11

Torture:

Martial law provision secretly passed in Congress Committee

A noted human rights group spokesperson has stated that the mandatory military detention provision that the Senate Armed Services Committee secretly discussed and passed this week, is what martial-law states, not democracies do.

The Senate Armed Services Committee's vote this week redefined rules for detaining terrorism suspects, including giving power to military judges to review cases of prisoners in Afghanistan and mandating military detention for important Qaeda suspects even captured on United States soil according to The New York Times.

Obama Nearly Triples Bagram Detainee Population

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/04/bagram_obama_gitmo/index.html

President Obama has presided over a threefold increase in the number of detainees being held at the controversial military detention center at Bagram Air Base, the Afghan cousin of the notorious prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. It's the latest piece of news that almost certainly would be getting more attention -- especially from Democrats -- if George W. Bush were still president.

There are currently more than 1,700 detainees at Bagram, up from over 600 at the end of the Bush administration...

George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'
April 9, 2010, The Times (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7092435.ece

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times. The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. He claimed that the former Vice-President and Defence Secretary knew that the majority of the initial 742 detainees sent to Guantánamo in 2002 were innocent but believed that it was “politically impossible to release them”. Colonel Wilkerson, a long-time critic of the Bush Administration’s approach to counter-terrorism and the war in Iraq, claimed that the majority of detainees — children as young as 12 and men as old as 93 — never saw a US soldier when they were captured. He said that many were turned over by Afghans and Pakistanis for up to $5,000. Little or no evidence was produced as to why they had been taken. He also claimed that one reason Mr Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld did not want the innocent detainees released was because “the detention efforts would be revealed as the incredibly confused operation that they were”.

Note: For lots more on the realities of the "war on terror", click here.

George W. Bush 'knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent'

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7092435.ece

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times.

The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.

He added: “I discussed the issue of the Guantánamo detainees with Secretary Powell. I learnt that it was his view that it was not just Vice-President Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld, but also President Bush who was involved in all of the Guantánamo decision making.”

George W Bush should be prosecuted over torture, says human rights group

Human Rights Watch claims Obama administration 'failing to act on evidence', and also names Cheney and Rumsfeld in report

A US human rights group has called on foreign governments to prosecute George W Bush and some of his senior officials for war crimes if the Obama administration fails to investigate a growing body of evidence against the former president over the use of torture.

'I'm proud of using waterboarding to break terrorists,' declares Bush's top political adviser

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1257437/Karl-Rove-Im-proud-using-waterboarding-break-terrorists.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58&feature=player_embedded

George W Bush's top political adviser has said he was 'proud' of controversial techniques such as waterboarding, which he claimed broke the will of terrorist.

Karl Rove - known as the former president's 'brain' - said he did not believe that the interrogation method amounted to torture.

In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that waterboarding - which simulates drowning - had helped prevent terrorist attacks.

'I'm proud that we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots,' he said.

'I am proud that we kept the world safer than it was by the use of these techniques. They are appropriate, they are in conformity with our international requirements and with US law.'

Asked if he believed waterboarding was torture, he said: 'No, it's not. People need to read the memos that outline what was permissible and not permissible before they make a judgement about these things.'

'Every one of the people who were waterboarded had a doctor who had to ascertain that there had been no long-lasting physical or mental damage to the individual,' he said.

Waterboarding sessions brought detainees ‘close to death’: report

The waterboarding sessions that terrorist suspects were subjected to during the Bush administration were "administered with meticulous cruelty" and were in part designed so that detainees acted as "guinea pigs" for future interrogation sessions, says an exhaustive new report.

Drawing on numerous documents about the CIA's torture program that have been released over the past year, Mark Benjamin at Salon.com reports that interrogators went to extreme lengths to ensure that detainees were pushed to their physical limits, including feeding the detainees a liquid diet to make them more capable of ingesting large quantities of water, and replacing their water with a saline solution that would keep detainees from dying when they ingested too much water.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Welcome to Ameristan, the country which institutionalized torture in the 21st century!

U.S. intelligence officers waterboarded 9/11 mastermind 160 times, says ex-MI5 boss

'The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing,' said the former head of the domestic spy agency.

Webmaster's Commentary:

As the American empire falls, we truly do face a new dark ages!

NAZI: Petraeus says torture an option for US

...says the US should consider using special interrogation techniques when a captive is withholding information that is immediately needed to save lives.

Obama Administration Shuts Down Investigations Into Bush-era Torture

Global Research

As part of its cover-up of Bush administration war crimes, the Obama administration announced June 30 that it would shut down 99 investigations into deaths of prisoners in US custody during the so-called “war on terror,” leaving only two investigations with the potential to develop into criminal prosecutions.

The announcement underscores the fact that the anti-democratic policies developed during the presidency of George W. Bush continue unchallenged under President Barack Obama, who is doing everything in his power to keep the lid on the crimes of his predecessor...

Justice Department Gives Torturers a Pass

The Justice Department recently announced that, of the 101 cases involving alleged illegal treatment of post-9/11 detainees by the CIA and its contractors, 99 were being closed. The remaining two, which involved deaths in custody, would continue to be investigated.

Holder has lost any semblance of credibility with this finding, and has shown his absolute contempt and loathing for true justice here. In fact, Attorney General Holder can be legitimately described as running the United States' Injustice Department.

This is simply a manifestation of privileged individuals in this country taking care their own, and Holder is simply a compliant tool in this process, insuring that absolutely no responsibility falls on those who created and implemented the US's torture policy.

CIA Exhales: 99 Out of 101 Torture Cases Dropped

This is how one of the darkest chapters in U.S. counterterrorism ends: with practically every instance of suspected CIA torture dodging criminal scrutiny. It’s one of the greatest gifts the Justice Department could have given the CIA as David Petraeus takes over the agency.

If there is no bringing the entire former cabal which introduced torture as a "normal interrogation procedure" at the top to justice,(lead by that unholy trinity of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld), the US government will have, permanently, lost its moral compass.

Petraeus re-opens the torture debate

As commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, David Petraeus made his opposition to torture crystal clear. Which is why it came as a surprise when Petraeus, nominated to lead the CIA, asked Congress on Thursday to clarify how far interrogators can go in inflicting pain on detainees in “special cases."

Petraeus referred to what's known as the "ticking bomb scenario," a hypothetical in which the agency has in custody a suspect who has knowledge of an imminent, catastrophic attack. "There should be a discussion of that by policymakers in Congress," Petraeus told the Senate intelligence committee, where "more than, again, the normal techniques" would be used to pry intelligence out of the detainee.

Memo to CIA director-in-waiting Petraeus: torture is both morally wrong, and useless as a technique. Sir, you know better, and that you are even bringing up this scenario in your Congressional testimony has just made me sick to my stomach for the pain and suffering you seem so eager to have the US government authorize and inflict.

As reported on 10 March, 2008 at:

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/10/fbi-interrogator-tor.html

'FBI interrogator: Torture doesn't work, breeds jihad"

'Here's a former FBI interrogator -- who interrogated Al Quaeda suspects -- saying categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence, but that it does sell impressionable people on the legitimacy of jihad, on the grounds that a regime that tortures deserves to be attacked."

'Former FBI Interrogator Jack Cloonan explains that regular interrogation tactics work well on even the worst terrorists, that there's no such thing as a "ticking timebomb" scenario, and that waterboarding has done much more harm than good. You can also see interviews with Jack Cloonan in the Oscar award-winning documentary, "Taxi to the Darkside."

General Petraeus has to understand the following; if he does not, he is not fit to lead the CIA:

When the US government institutionalizes torture, it:

1. Walks away from any human rights treaty to which it has ever been a signatory, including the Geneva Accords.

2. Shows that it has utter contempt for human rights, human dignity, and the rule of law.

3. Gives any hostile foreign nation carte blanche to torture US military and civilians. General Petraeus, you are a professional military officer: I am more than amazed that this consideration wasn't foremost in your mind in terms of protecting our troops in harm's way around the world.

And lastly, General Petraeus, you understand this reality, which has been known since the times of the Catholic Inquisition; torture has a pre-arranged outcome to which the tortured person is to confess to get the torture to stop.

This may be great for show trials, military tribunals, and alleged justification for further torture. It is not, however, about getting at the truth, and this is truly at the heart of the matter.

Man reappears 10 years after his 'death'

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese man who was supposedly hacked to death in a fight has reappeared in his hometown after 10 years, state media said, raising questions about police torture to extract a confession from the alleged killer.

Zhao Zuohai, the supposed killer, was acquitted of the crime and released by a Henan court on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua said, citing a court press conference on Sunday.

He had served 10 years of a 29-year sentence after confessing to killing Zhao Zhenshang in a hatchet fight in central China's Henan province, the China Daily reported this weekend.

A headless body was found in a village well about a year after the fight, at which point Zhao was arrested and confessed to the killing.

The victim, Zhao Zhenshang, reappeared in the village on May 2 to seek welfare support. He had fled after the fight because he feared he had killed the now-imprisoned Zhao.

Convictions in the Chinese court system are strongly dependent on confessions, motivating police to use force to get a confession and close the case.

A series of deaths in police custody over the last year has emboldened reformers and aided a fight by the Ministry of Justice to wrest control of detention centres from the police.

The courts conducted an audit of all death penalty cases after a woman in Hubei province reappeared over a decade after her husband, She Xianglin, was jailed for her murder, in a case that also rested on his confession to police.

Relatives who maintained She's innocence were also jailed.

The imprisoned Zhao's brother told the local Dahe Newspaper that police had forced him to drink chili water and set off fireworks over his head to force the confession.

The imprisoned Zhao narrowly escaped being executed for the crime. His sentence was commuted from a death penalty with two years' reprieve.

Medic at Guantanamo hearing says Khadr chained to door

A former U.S. Army combat medic testified Monday that he once found Canadian teen captive Omar Khadr chained by the arms to the door of a five-foot-square cage at a U.S. lock-up in Afghanistan, hooded and weeping.

Pentagon prosecutors called M, who treated Khadr's injuries twice daily in Afghanistan until Khadr was transferred to Guantanamo, to defend Khadr's treatment as humane. M's testimony, however, was the first by a government witness to corroborate a portion of an affidavit Khadr drew up describing abusive treatment.

Webmaster's Commentary:

There are many problems with US agents torturing prisoners of war for "confessions" which are simply intended to be propaganda rants to justify continued military aggression against certain groups of people who just happen to be living over natural resources the US government wants to claim as "ours".

First, by so doing, the US has, for all practical intents and purposes, withdrawn from every human rights treaty to which it has ever been a signatory.

Secondly, no US politicians or citizen can ever speak again about how the US loves human dignity and human rights with a straight face when we torture.

And third (all you with family serving the US military, please pay attention here), when the US tortures prisoners of war to extract "confessions", it gives carte blanche to any hostile foreign country to do precisely the same.

The evidence for Khadr's innocence

For six years after Canadian Omar Khadr was captured by the American military, the public heard only one story about the events of July 27, 2002 in Afghanistan.

During a four-hour battle with mujahedeen fighters, American soldier Christopher Speer was killed by a grenade. Khadr, 15, was the only enemy fighter left alive after the battle. He was shot twice in the back and taken prisoner. Shortly after, the U.S. military said Khadr threw the fatal grenade that killed Speer, though there was no eyewitness.

Judges ban secret evidence in Guantánamo compensation case

Ministers and the security services were blocked today from using secret information to defend a damages claim by six former Guantánamo Bay detainees.

Binyam Mohamed and five former prisoners are claiming damages against the Government for complicity in torture and extraordinary rendition.

But in a victory for the men, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, the Master of the Rolls, and two other appeal judges unanimously ruled that it was not open to the courts to order the "closed material procedure" in an ordinary civil claim.

Webmaster's Commentary:

What happened to these men was absolutely horrendous; but that they are finally getting their day in court will, hopefully, open the eyes of the British public (and the world) just what "extreme interrogation measures" meant, and unfortunately still means, under the US definition.

What is really sickening is that the US is still using these tactics against prisoners of war, and these tactics are banned under the statues of the Geneva Convention (to which I believe, the US is still, allegedly, a signatory).

Lawrence Wilkerson Demolishes Bush, Cheney, And Rumsfeld’s Lies About Guantánamo

Those of us who have been studying the recent career of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson were not surprised when, last week, he submitted a declaration (PDF) in a lawsuit seeking compensation from the U.S. government that was filed by former Guantánamo prisoner Adel Hassan Hamad. A Sudanese hospital worker, Hamad was sold to U.S. forces by their unscrupulous Pakistani allies in the summer of 2002, but was only released from Guantánamo in December 2007.

In the declaration, Col. Wilkerson, who served in the U.S. military for 31 years and was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from August 2002 until January 2005, stated that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld all knew — and didn’t care — that “the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent.”

Col. Wilkerson also wrote:

[S]everal in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released. But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers.

Furthermore, Col. Wilkerson wrote:

[I]t has never come to my attention in any persuasive way — from classified information or otherwise — that any intelligence of significance was gained from any of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay other than from the handful of undisputed ring leaders and their companions, clearly no more than a dozen or two of the detainees, and even their alleged contribution of hard, actionable intelligence is intensely disputed in the relevant communities such as intelligence and law enforcement. This is perhaps the most astounding truth of all, carefully masked by men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney in their loud rhetoric — continuing even now in the case of Cheney — about future attacks thwarted, resurgent terrorists, the indisputable need for torture and harsh interrogation and for secret prisons and places such as GITMO.

The third point — President Obama’s inability to close Guantánamo — is particularly relevant right now. This was largely outside the scope of Col. Wilkerson’s remit for the declaration, but it was depressing to realize, while reviewing his earlier pronouncements, that a year ago he had pointed out “the now prevalent supposition, recently reinforced by the new team in the White House, that closing down our prison facilities at Guantánamo Bay would take some time and development of a highly complex plan.

Compare and contrast

At least 100 detainees died in U.S. custody, many as a result of interrogation practices and detention conditions. Gen. Barry McCaffrey put it this way: "We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A." Other than a handful of very low-level scapegoats, none has been punished, or even investigated, but rather immunized in multiple ways, both formal and informal. Army Gen. Antonio Taguba concluded that the abuse was the direct result of the orders of top-level Bush officials and said: "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.

By Glenn Greenwald

I'll just go ahead and pass this on without (much) comment, because the point is self-evident:

Iran Torture Trials Begin

TEHRAN, Iran — The trial in Iran opened Tuesday for 12 suspects accused of torturing to death three anti-government protesters tortured in prison during the turmoil following the June elections, the official news agency reported.

Iran's judiciary last year charged 12 officials at Kahrizak prison for involvement in the death of three protesters detained there in July. . . .

In January, a parliamentary probe found a former Tehran prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, responsible for the torture death of the three in Kahrizak detention center in the capital. . . . .

Anger over the abuse emerged in August, after influential conservative figures in the clerical hierarchy condemned the mistreatment of detainees. The outrage forced Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to order the immediate closure of [] Kahrizak.

At least 100 detainees died in U.S. custody, many as a result of interrogation practices and detention conditions. Gen. Barry McCaffrey put it this way: "We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A." Other than a handful of very low-level scapegoats, none has been punished, or even investigated, but rather immunized in multiple ways, both formal and informal. Army Gen. Antonio Taguba concluded that the abuse was the direct result of the orders of top-level Bush officials and said: "there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." Most of the people subject to our lawless "war on Terror" detention system were completely innocent.

Iran is a horribly oppressive regime and many of these judicial processes may (or may not) be sham trials. But they have a citizenry which effectively demanded accountability for torture, a government which relented to citizen demands, and a judiciary which compelled at least some judicial scrutiny and adjudication for these crimes. One can only imagine what it must be like to be a citizen of a country that feels obligated -- even if just to placate populist anger -- to at least maintain the pretense of that the rule of law applies to all.

UPDATE: And just by the way, Agence France-Presse's Olivier Knox reported today: "AIPAC writes every member of US Congress urging 'crippling' sanctions on Iran." But remember: any suggestion that belligerent U.S. actions towards Iran has anything at all to do with Israel would be deeply inappropriate, probably even anti-Semitic or, at the very best, an idea which all decent people would agree has a "revolting provenance."

Judge allows American to sue Rumsfeld over torture

A federal judge has ruled that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld can be sued personally for damages by a former U.S. military contractor who says he was tortured during a nine-month imprisonment in Iraq.

Court sanctions CIA for destroying torture tapes

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was sanctioned by a federal court Monday and ordered to reimburse the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for legal fees expended trying to obtain evidence that the agency tortured terror war prisoners during the Bush administration.

Though a minor victory for the ACLU, the case was ultimately the closing of a window of opportunity to see agency officials held accountable for the abuse of prisoners and the destruction of evidence in violation of court order.

In striking down the ACLU's request to hold the CIA in contempt, New York district Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein affirmed the agency's seeming immunity to the law, insisting the U.S. needs "our spies" in spite of their apparent actions.

Obama Signs One-Year Extension of Patriot Act
February 27, 2010, New York Times/Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/02/27/us/politics/AP-US-Obama-Patriot-Act.html

President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation's main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act. Provisions in the measure would have expired on [February 28] without Obama's signature [the day before]. The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government's ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security. Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will: -- Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones. -- Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations. -- Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group. Obama's signature comes after the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the measure. The Senate also approved the measure, with privacy protections cast aside. Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government's authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

Note: Remember that the PATRIOT Act was passed by Congress immediately after weaponized anthrax attacks on two key senators opposed to the legislation, a crime that the FBI has closed the books on without solving. Congress continues to support the Act despite its widespread unpopularity with the US public. Why? For lots more from major media sources on the increasing government threats to civil liberties, click here.

A Detention Bill You Ought to Read More Carefully

Webmaster's Commentary:

Along with announcing that freedom of speech is again under attack, that John McCain introduced this bill should end any speculations that voting for him instead of Obama would have changed anything at all.

Why is the national security community treating the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration's choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt? A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. Read the bill here, and then read the summarized points after the jump.
According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.

(There is no distinction between U.S. persons--visa holders or citizens--and non-U.S. persons.)

It would require these "belligerents" to be coded as "high-value detainee[s]" to be held in military custody and interrogated for their intelligence value by a High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team established by the president. (The H.I.G., of course, was established to bring a sophisticated interrogation capacity to the federal justice system.)

Any suspected unprivileged enemy belligerents considered a "high-value detainee" shall not be provided with a Miranda warning.

The bill asks the President to determine criteria for designating an individual as a "high-value detainee" if he/she: (1) poses a threat of an attack on civilians or civilian facilities within the U.S. or U.S. facilities abroad; (2) poses a threat to U.S. military personnel or U.S. military facilities; (3) potential intelligence value; (4) is a member of al Qaeda or a terrorist group affiliated with al Qaeda or (5) such other matters as the President considers appropriate. The President must submit the regulations and guidance to the appropriate committees of Congress no later than 60 days after enactment.

To the extent possible, the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must make a preliminary determination whether the detainee is an unprivileged enemy belligerent within 48 hours of taking detainee into custody.

The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Team must submit its determination to the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General after consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General make a final determination and report the determination to the President and the appropriate committees of Congress. In the case of any disagreement between the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General, the President will make the determination.

Note that the president himself doesn't get to make the call.

‘US running international network of secret detentions’

A United Nations report on the existence of secret detention facilities in countries around the world puts most of the blame on the US and its Central Intelligence Agency.

The report says that the CIA, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, runs scores of secret prisons in foreign countries where suspected terrorists are held, a Deutsche Welle article read on Saturday.

The UN report charges that the United States has created an “international network” to keep in detention anyone it deems as potential enemies.

According to Deutsche Welle, the secret prisons exist in more than 66 countries.

These countries include Algeria, Egypt, India, Russia, Sudan and Zimbabwe where suspects and dissidents are kept in secret facilities.

Poland and Romania are accused of hosting the CIA secret prisons on their soils.

The report further suggests that the US transfers its prisoners to countries like Ethiopia, Djibouti, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Syria and even Thailand for interrogation.

According to the UN report, in Israel Palestinian prisoners are kept in secret detention under the “illegal fighter” law.

The UN report says while the existence of the secret prisons around the world violates the human and international rights they introduce a “serious problem on a global scale.”

“If resorted to in a widespread or systematic manner, secret detention might reach the threshold of a crime against humanity,” suggests the report.

Four UN Special Rapporteurs Martin Scheinin, Manfred Nowak, Shaheen Sardar Ali, and Jeremy Sarkin, have contributed to the report.

The report was due to be examined in Geneva this month; however, the resistance shown by some countries postponed the process until June.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This too is a repeat of the Nazis. Germans living only a few miles from the slave-labor camps did not know they were there or what was going on inside.

CIA using secret Somalia facility, prison: report

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Central Intelligence Agency is using a secret facility in Somalia for counterterrorism purposes as well as a secret prison in the Somali capital, the magazine The Nation reported Tuesday.

The report said the CIA has "a sprawling walled compound" on the coast of the Indian Ocean which looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls.

According to the magazine, the site has its own airport and is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access...

Somali Detainee Interrogated for Months on US Ship

A Obama Administration has announced its intention to prosecute a Somali named Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, who was captured in mid-April, on charges that he “provided support” to the al-Shabaab opposition faction in the nation.

The Justice Department termed him an “al-Shabaab leader” but does not accuse him of doing anything in particular beyond being in the organization. The real story here, however, is that since his capture Warsame has been held on a US Navy warship for interrogation.

"So I can truthfully state that this man was not tortured on US soil!" -- Official White Horse Souse

Somali's secret detention legal: White House

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House Wednesday defended the treatment of an alleged leader of Somalia's Shebab Islamist insurgency who was interrogated for two months on a US warship, saying his detention was lawful.

In the first known case of the secret detention of a terror suspect by the administration of President Barack Obama, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was captured in the Gulf on April 19 and kept aboard a US Navy ship at sea...

Rights abuses by U.S. grounds for denying extradition, court rules

A Toronto judge was justified in freeing an alleged Al Qaeda collaborator given the gravity of human rights abuses committed by the United States in connection with his capture in Pakistan, the Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled.

The Toronto man is the older brother of Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr and son of Ahmed Khadr, who was suspected of having close ties with Osama bin Laden and killed in a shootout with Pakistan’s security forces on the Afghanistan border in 2003.

“We must adhere to our democratic and legal values, even if that adherence serves in the short term to benefit those who oppose and seek to destroy those values,” said Justice Robert Sharpe, writing on behalf of Justices John Laskin and Eleanore Cronk.

As reported a on 7 May 2011 at:

http://wlcentral.org/node/1750

"In August 2006, Khadr's lawyer Dennis Edney filed an application to stay the extradition proceedings, arguing that the US government's evidence against Khadr was inadmissible because it relied on information gathered under torture in Pakistan. Khadr was held in a detention centre for the next five years until his release last August when the stay was granted and the presiding judge called his treatment "both shocking and unjustifiable."

Had Canada's legal system complied with the US request for extradition, (most probably on completely trumped-up charges), this man most probably would have been tortured yet again to confess to anything his tormentors wanted him to say in order to get the torture to stop.

My hat is off to this judge and this ruling: he got it absolutely correct, particularly in terms of the last two paragraphs above.

Torture Whistleblower CUT OFF Midsentence!

Innocent Man Imprisoned For 5 Years Survived CIA Electroshock Torture, Witnessed Lethal Beatings

Guantanamo Bay continues to wreck lives, despite President Obama's pledge to shut the notorious prison. RT spoke to one former prisoner, Murat Kurnaz, who says the US has not issued even a simple apology for his years of torment.

An innocent man imprisoned by the U.S. government for 5 years in CIA torture camps survived electroshock torture and witnessed lethal beatings of prisoners.

Bills would transfer oversight of terror cases

A bill in the House of Representatives, sponsored by Rep. Bobby Shilling, R-Ill., would require terrorism suspects, including those arrested in the United States, to be placed in military custody unless the Defense secretary rules otherwise.

"It acknowledges that the attorney general has played a too important role in these cases," said Josh Holly, a Republican spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee. "This represents a paradigm shift to the law of war."

A Senate bill, sponsored by Arizona's John McCain and other Republicans, includes a similar provision that calls for "members of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and affiliated terrorist groups" to be held by the military when captured.

Should these bills be voted into law by the US Congress, it will herald the absolute demise of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

And do not, for one moment, think that these laws will ultimately not apply to US citizens, even if they are completely peaceful, who have a reasoned, logical difference of opinion from that of the government.

US doctors 'hid signs of torture' at Guantanamo

US government doctors who cared for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay deliberately concealed or ignored evidence that their patients were being tortured, the first official study of its kind has found.

Iraq torture inquiry will not investigate whether British troops handed suspects to U.S.

An inquiry into Britain’s alleged complicity in torture during the Iraq war will not investigate whether our forces handed suspects to the Americans for interrogation.

The probe, ordered last year by David Cameron, will not look at the issue of detainees being transferred between forces fighting in Iraq and elsewhere – known as ‘extraordinary rendition’.

MPs attacked the decision, which appeared to contradict claims made by the Prime Minister that the inquiry would examine ‘all the issues’.

High Court Turns Away Rendition Case

The Supreme Court refused Monday to review a ruling that blocked a lawsuit alleging a Boeing Co. subsidiary helped the Central Intelligence Agency seize terrorism suspects abroad and secretly transfer them to other countries for interrogation.

The high court rejected an appeal by five men who claimed that U.S. operatives—with support from Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a Boeing unit—abducted them and sent them to other countries where they were tortured. They alleged Jeppesen provided critical flight planning and logistical support to the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program. The men were seeking unspecified monetary damages from the company.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations warned that allowing the lawsuit to go forward could threaten national security.

This has nothing to do with "national security" and everything to do with not embarrassing the Executive branch of this government with something as horrendous as the use of torture to obtain a confession, something absolutely antithetical to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Guantánamo Suicide Was Severely Mentally Ill, And Was A Case of Mistaken Identity

There is cruelty. There is stupidity. And far too often, when it comes to the activities of the US government in the "War on Terror," there is both.

As is now known, however, the unlamented death of a man held in such a disturbingly aberrant manner only scratched the surface of the horrors surrounding his death.

As his attorney, Paul Rashkind, a federal defender in Miami, told the Associated Press on Thursday, he had tried to kill himself twice at Guantánamo, and was severely mentally ill, with what the AP described as "a long-term mental illness that predated his time in custody."

The establishment of Gitmo by Bush,coupled with the refusal by Obama to shut it down, means that citizens and officials of the United States can no longer talk about the US's passion for justice, dignity, and human rights with a straight face.

US ran 'secret terror hunt' in Sweden: report

US intelligence agents have staked out suspected "terrorists" in Sweden, without the authorisation of the government there, the online edition of a Swedish daily reported Sunday.

When the Army Uses “Enhanced Interrogation” on an American Soldier

In gruesome detail, Luther described what happened to him at Camp Taji’s aid station. He thought he would receive medical care. Instead he was confined to an isolation chamber and held there for over a month, under enforced sleep deprivation, until he agreed to sign papers saying that he was ill before coming to Iraq and thus not eligible for disability and medical benefits. “They wanted me to say I had a ‘personality disorder,’” Luther told me.

The spotlight on Town prompted military doctors to step forward and talk about being pressured by their superiors to purposely misdiagnose wounded soldiers. One doctor spoke of a soldier who returned from Iraq with a massive chunk missing from his right leg. The doctor quit after he was pressured to diagnose that soldier as having personality disorder.

Since 2001 more than 22,600 soldiers have been discharged with personality disorder (PD), saving the military billions in disability and medical benefits.

In the wake of those developments, I was flooded with calls from soldiers who had fractured bones and been pierced by grenade shrapnel, only to be told that their wounds came from a problem with their personality — a pre-existing illness that had somehow gone undetected with each military screening and only popped up now, after they returned wounded from combat.

He sent me photos of the isolation chamber.

“This was an aid station,” he said, “but it felt a lot more like enhanced interrogation than medical care.”

After a month, Luther was willing to sign anything — and did. Soon after he signed his name to a personality disorder discharge, he was whisked back to Fort Hood and informed about a PD discharge’s disastrous consequences. No disability pay, no long-term medical care, and because he didn’t serve out his contract, he’d have to pay back a portion of his signing bonus. “They told me I now owed the Army $1,500.”

The Torture Hearings

Sergeant Chuck Luther sat before a Congressional committee and described how he was tortured by U.S. Army officials.

I especially love it when Rep. Buyer tells Luther that he should shut up because his accusation "sully" the reputation of the US Army, an institution currently torturing and murdering the innocent people of a dozen countries as it invades and conquers in search of wealth to please their IMF masters.

Every parent of any child considering joining the military has to forece their kid to watch this video!

Solitary Confinement Widely Used in U.S.

Supreme Court orders California to release tens of thousands of prison inmates

The Supreme Court ordered California on Monday to release tens of thousands of its prisoners to relieve overcrowding, saying that "needless suffering and death" had resulted from putting too many inmates into facilities that cannot hold them in decent conditions.

It is one of the largest prison release orders in the nation's history, and it sharply split the high court.

Justices upheld an order from a three-judge panel in California that called for releasing 38,000 to 46,000 prisoners. Since then, the state has transferred about 9,000 state inmates to county jails. As a result, the total prison population is now about 32,000 more than the capacity limit set by the panel.

The US penal system neither reforms nor rehabilitates, and current numbers for recidivism hover at +40%.

The staggering amount of money spent to achieve such consistently lousy outcomes, coupled with these recidivism rates, should outrage every thinking tax-paying US citizen.

Journey into the CIA's heart of darkness: Ex-agent reveals 'torture' of terror suspect in secret prison dubbed 'Hotel California'

A former CIA operative has described how he was torn between serving his country and refusing to 'torture' a man he believed was innocent.

Glenn Carle has written a shocking new tell-all memoir detailing his time with the agency in which he confessed that some people would call him a 'torturer'.

Though the CIA has already redacted 40 per cent of his book in a two-year battle to get it published, Carle was still able to provide a vivid account of his journey to a CIA 'black site' or secret prison.

There, he said, he spent 10 intense days psychologically manipulating a man who the agency believed could hand them Osama Bin Laden - but who Carle believed was innocent.

He was told to 'do whatever is necessary' - subverting Geneva conventions in favour of the American flag.

WikiLeaks now being used to propagandize for more use of torture.

The WikiLeaks documents provide still additional evidence that intelligence gained from CIA detainees not only helped lead us to Osama bin Laden, it helped us disrupt a number of follow-on attacks that had been set in motion after 9/11,” said Marc Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter.

This should pretty much confirm that WikiLeaks is a propaganda hoax.

Obama ok's US citizen assassinations

The Obama administration has authorized the assassination of an American citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki who is a Muslim cleric and he is suspected of organizing terrorist attacks against the US. He is now on the top of the FBI's most wanted list. David Swanson says that this is illegal and that if the International Criminal Court has the right to prosecute an American if they had the backing.

Obama's assassination list

Obama gives order to kill American imam
April 8, 2010, The Times (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7089899.ece

The Obama Administration has taken the unprecedented step of authorising the killing of a US citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. The decision is extraordinary not only because Mr al-Awlaki is believed to be the first American whose killing has been approved by a US President, but also because the Obama Administration chose to make the move public. The Los Angeles Times reported in January that Mr al-Awlaki’s name had been placed on a top-secret list of targeted killings. In the past 24 hours, however, a handful of intelligence and counter-terrorism officials have briefed Reuters and The New York Times on the decision. The authorisation ... and the decision to make it public is a high-risk strategy. Tina Foster, of the US-based International Justice Network, told The Times: “It is shocking that our Government would go to these extremes, even depriving someone of their life without a legal process.” The policy of targeted killings is controversial. President Ford issued an order in 1976 banning political assassinations. Yet Congress approved the use of force against al-Qaeda after the September 11 attacks.

Note: Obama is the first president to order the assassination an American citizen. Neither George W. Bush nor Dick Cheney asserted such a power on the part of the president. For an analysis, click here.

The 'Obama doctrine': kill, don't detain
April 11, 2010, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/apr/11/obama-national-security-drone-guantanamo

Extrajudicial killings and targeted assassinations will soon become the main point of contention that Obama's administration will need to justify. The extensive use of drones under Obama have taken the death count well beyond anything that has been seen before. The legal justifications put forward by [the Obama administration] are reminiscent of the arguments that were used by John Yoo and others in their bid to lend legitimacy to unlawful practices such as rendition, arbitrary detention and torture. The laws of war do not allow for the targeting of individuals outside of the conflict zone, and yet we now find that extrajudicial killings are taking place in countries as far apart as Yemen, the Horn of Africa and Pakistan. From a legal and moral perspective, the rationale provided by the State Department is bankrupt and only reinforces the stereotype that the US has very little concern for its own principles. The hope that came with the election of Barack Obama has faded as his policies have indicated nothing more than a reconfiguration of the basic tenet of the Bush Doctrine – that the US's national security interests supersede any consideration of due process or the rule of law. The only difference – witness the rising civilian body count from drone attacks – being that Obama's doctrine is even more deadly.

Note: For lots more on the realities of the "war on terror", click here.

The 'Obama doctrine': kill, don't detain

George Bush left a big problem in the shape of Guantánamo. The solution? Don't capture bad guys, assassinate by drone

UK's secret policy on torture revealed

A top-secret document revealing how MI6 and MI5 officers were allowed to extract information from prisoners being illegally tortured overseas has been seen by the Guardian.

The interrogation policy – details of which are believed to be too sensitive to be publicly released at the government inquiry into the UK's role in torture and rendition – instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer. It was operated by the British government for almost a decade.

Appeals Court Revives Torture Claims Against Exxon

In a major ruling with wide implications for corporations that operate overseas, a divided federal appeals court in Washington today said Exxon Mobil Corp. is not immune from liability for alleged brutal conduct that agents of the company allegedly orchestrated against a group of Indonesian villagers.

The plaintiffs, 15 Indonesian villagers, sued Exxon in two actions in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming government security forces, working for Exxon, killed and tortured villagers in Aceh, Indonesia.

Économie:

Italy 'to default' but Spain may 'just' escape

With the countries weighed down by debt, the think tank modelled "good" and "bad" economic scenarios for both.

It found that Italy will not avoid default unless it sees an unlikely big jump in economic growth.

Under the private central bank debt-based currency system, "big jump in economic growth" means "plunge the people further into debt-slavery to the bankers!"

France and Germany: One more bailout away from fiscal crisis

The debt ratios of the key players illustrates well (first chart) that virtually everyone is courting fiscal crisis. The easy way out of turning to bigger, more solvent governments for bailouts has run its course.

The Debt Ceiling Set For Progressive Repealing

Of course the government will have enough money to pay the monthly Social Security checks. The Social Security administration has its own savings – in Treasury bills. I realize that lawyers (such as Mr. Obama and indeed most American presidents) rarely understand economics. But this is a legal issue. Mr. Obama certainly must know that Social Security is solvent, with liquid securities to pay for many decades to come. Yet Mr. Obama has put Social Security at the very top of his hit list!

The GOP (not to mention the American people) signed off on the "Deal" on Obama's promise there would be no increase in taxes. Then before the ink is even dry, Pelosi admits they are planning to get around that by creating NEW taxes, including a VAT or National Sales Tax! The likely members of the so-called Super Congress are already talking about "finally" imposing a carbon-tax on Americans "to fight global warming" even though the southern hemisphere is in the middle of their fourth record-setting cold winter in a row!

They are addicts! They are addicted to your money! They are so deeply in withdrawal for the last of your cash they couldn't even wait for the Senate to vote on the "deal" before bragging to everyone it was a scam!

And the sad thing is that none of this "Deal" will protect the US credit rating, because all the debt deal did was authorize Bernanke to print up lots more paper currency, driving the value of the dollar down, thereby reducing the value of existing loans to the United States. The US Government is trying to inflate the debt away, and nobody can keep giving the US Government a AAA rating when they are simply printing up the money to pay their debts off. The money has to be worth something, and ultimately those dollars are in theory redeemed by the slave-labor of the American people. That is why the government able to print up money out of thin air taxes you to the edge of starvation; to force you to be willing to trade your labor and productivity for those worthless scraps of paper being redeemed by foreign creditors! Government MUST keep you poor to keep you repaying their loans with your sweat and pain!

But there is a problem! In their haste to set up Americans so the banks could steal their homes to cover the losses from the mortgage-backed securities fraud, the US Government used tax credits to encourage the off-shoring of manufacturing jobs to other nations. So it doesn't matter how hard the government flogs the American people, the means to transform that labor into capital, manufacturing, is not present in this nation in adequate supply.

It is one thing to produce full domestic employment by handing out rubber gloves and badges, but to redeem those paper dollars held by foreign governments requires tangible material goods that those dollars may be traded for, and those are in very short supply.

Those paper dollars already pouring out of Bernanke's printing presses are worthless in the foreign markets if there is nothing in the United States anyone wants to buy with them! Even our once profitable weapons industries reel from the embarrassments of the USS San Antonio, the grounding of the F-22s, the scrapping of the USNS Bejamin Isherwood and the USNS Henry Eckford without ever seeing a day of real service, etc. etc. etc. have proclaimed to the world that America's weapons systems, like its medical care are drastically over-priced and ineffective.

Right now the only thing holding the US Government's AAA credit rating in place may well be the threat of nuclear annihilation!

OBAMA PROMISES NO CUTS UNTIL AFTER NEXT ELECTION!

"Although the deal is supposed to cut as much as $2.4 trillion in spending over the next decade, Obama said that none of the spending cuts will occur anytime soon so that not to derail the phony economic recovery. That’s right, none of the cuts will come until early 2013 and by then we will need to once again raise the debt ceiling to north of $20 trillion. If our elected representatives were serious about cutting spending, they would have the bulk of the spending cuts now and not in the future when many of them will be out of office."

So, "Massa" Obama is going to borrow another $2 trillion to which your children will be enslaved, there are no tax increases, no spending cuts, no balanced budget... The debt increases, and all Obama and the Congress agreed to do is make it someone else's problem!

It is time to foreclose on this deadbeat government!

It’s not a “Debt Crisis”. It’s "Economic Genocide"

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25822

The grotesque political carnival gripping Washington is being referred to as a “debt crisis”. But the debt and the looming default of the United States are merely symptoms of the wider calamity that remains deliberately unaddressed.

This is a global collapse: the death and controlled demolition of a global capital system built on petroleum, political corruption, institutionalized fraud, the manufactured “war on terrorism”, the wholesale looting of taxpayer funds, and the imminent destruction of state social programs and civil society.

This collapse is thoroughly detailed by the prescient Mike Ruppert in his book Crossing the Rubicon, the book Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World, and the film Collapse. His web site Collapsenet continues to report on events as they happen.

World collapse is also fully explained, from a different perspective, in the book The Global Economic Crisis, edited by Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall.

Chossudovksy writes:

“We are not dealing with a narrow defined economic crisis or recession. The global financial architecture sustains strategic and national security objectives. In turn, the US-NATO military agenda serves to endorse powerful business elite which relentlessly overshadows and undermines the functions of civilian government….The meltdown of financial markets in 2008-2009 was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation. The “bank bailouts” were implemented on the instructions of Wall Street, leading to the largest transfer of money wealth in recorded history, while simultaneously creating an insurmountable public debt.”

NBC News: Debt negotiators 'very close' to deal

McConnell told CNN's "State of the Union" that lawmakers are looking at a package that would raise the debt ceiling in two stages through the elections next year. He also said, "there are no tax increases in this proposal.”

McConnell said the deal being worked on, while raising the debt ceiling in two stages, would satisfy Obama's demand that there not be another debate on the issue before next year's election. The scenario being discussed would raise the debt ceiling unless a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress voted to block that move.

The way this deal is shaped, Congress can avoid BOTH the tax and entitlement fights until 2013," NBC News' Chuck Todd said in a tweet.

In other words, both parties got what they wanted by agreeing to let the other party duck the issue until after the elections!

Obama gets to borrow more money (you are hereby commanded to work your lives away to pay it back) by promising to cut spending, but doesn't have to publicly say where spending cuts are going to fall. That onerous duty falls on a to-be-determined committee at some to-be-determined future date, to keep said cuts from the public eye (which tell you whose throat is about to get slit).

So, you are on the hook for another $30,000 plus accruing interest, in exchange for which the government is about to reduce your standard of living yet again. You will have less money for your food, your children's clothing, your car and credit payments, the roads will crumble a bit more, more bridges will collapse, more schools and hospitals will be forced to close, wages and salaries will continue to drop, the electricity, net, and phone service will be even more unreliable, etc. etc. etc.

Wall Street gets their bailouts (and to stay out of prison for the Mortgage-Backed Securities Fraud), DC gets to duck the whole issue of the mismanaged economy until after next year's elections, the Pentagon gets more airplanes that can't fly and ships that can't steam. All the while ABCNNBBCBSFOX will proclaim that this is a wonderful thing that was just done by their noble and exalted highnessenesses to you all!

Meanwhile, did you catch the part where Obama put his needs for next year's election ahead of what was really best for the people? Because if he thinks we in the patriot media are going to forget that little display of megalomaniacal self-interest a year for now, he already qualifies under the 25th Amendment!

Final point: The cut in spending of $1 for every $1 increase in the debt ceiling is not a solution to the overall debt crisis, it is just another delaying tactic. Interest is still applied to than new debt that offsets any savings in cuts, even if they ever actually happen. The overall debt continues to increase. I do not think the credit ratings agencies are going to be fooled by this charade. All DC has done is yank a cork from one hole in the bottom of the ship of state and pounded it into another in front of the press cameras, screaming "We are working to solve the problem!"

Treasuries, especially long-term, are now toxic assets.

The President Surrenders

"It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn't over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will."

This goes beyond mere partisan bickering, The moment there are any cuts to the social programs that We The People have already paid for, money the US Government borrowed from the trust funds and now refuses to pay back, the US Government is in financial default ... to the American people, and we have the legal and moral right to fire the government for failing to keep its promises to We The People, and to foreclose on the government.

Having been forced to pay for the largest killing machine in all of history I expect we'll get a good return when we liquidate the Department Of Let's Go Around The World Murdering The Brown People. We can beat those swords into plowshares, or at least into better schools and hospitals and roads for this nation; things that the US Government promised when they took our money, but never delivered.

So, there it is. Congress and the White House are worried about defaulting to the bankers and foreign governments, but We The People need to make the government understand that they cannot default on the people without consequences. After all, We The People paid for everything. This nation is the property of the American people. The government is a hired custodian that we may have been foolish to trust with the keys, and like a custodian at the high school who covers his spending problems by pawning the microscopes from the biology lab, this particular employee is clearly misbehaving and needs to be reminded that their first obligation is to the American people who paid for it all, not to Wall Street, not to foreign banks, not to the Department Of Let's Go Around The World Murdering The Brown People, and not to Israel.

Pelosi says new tax is 'on the table'

A new value-added tax (VAT) is "on the table" to help the U.S. address its fiscal liabilities, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday night.

During yesterday's radio show I predicted that the US Government promised not to increase taxes to get their "deal" through Congress, but never promised not to impose NEW taxes to loot the people to pay the bankers!

The Super-Congress is already planning to impose a carbon tax on you, and now Pelosi admits to a VAT, in effect a national sales tax, not as a replacement for the income tax, as was originally proposed, but in addition to.

I hope you like living in abject poverty, because that is where the government plans to shove you so the bankers don't have to admit there never was an eleventh marble!

Video: http://www.realecontv.com/page/4565.html

Lots of important financial topics are being swept under the rug right now.

One of them is the US government's move to completely take over residential real estate lending in the US.

In other words, in the Brave New World, you'll need to approach Washington on bended knee to get a mortgage.

This was recorded before the debt "agreement" but well worth a listen and covers a wide variety of topics including the US's credit rating and the reality of US default.

29 People Who Went From Wall Street To Washington To Wall Street

US company profits surge, even as economy slows

NEW YORK (AFP) - Major US companies are packing away record profits even as the economy falters, unemployment remains high and the debt-ceiling crisis has shaken confidence in the country, analysts said.

In July, corporate giants such as 3M, Caterpillar, Goodyear, Microsoft and Apple reported blockbuster results in the second quarter of 2011, though the stock market still slumped amid fears of an economic slowdown and a possible government default.

Of the companies in the S&P 500 list of large-cap firms which have reported their quarterly earnings to date, 72 percent have beaten analysts' forecasts, according to Standard & Poor's analyst Howard Silverblatt...

What $114,500,000,000,000 visually looks like in 100 dollar bills

Fed audit uncovers eye-popping new details about the $16 trillion in secret loans given to U.S. and foreign banks

The first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law passed one year ago this week directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. "As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of The FED was released Sunday, July 24 revealing $16 TRILLION IN SECRET BAILOUTS

Why the Federal Reserve had never been

public about this or even informed the United States Congress about
the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious — the American public would
have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed
out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

Those are not bailouts; those are buy-backs, buying back the fraudulent mortgage-backed securities so that the Wall Street crooks don't have to go to prison.

CNN trying to convince Americans we are obligated to pay the government's bills.

We did not spend that money. The government spent it, without our permission.

CNN is full of shit trying to make us feel responsible for the government's mistakes.

We did not buy a TV set. The government bailed out Wall Street, funded Israel, and launched endless wars to distract the people from their financial misdeeds. Private banks screwed up, and the government wants to stick us with the bill! If you will recall, when the Congress voted through the first of the TARP bailouts, the American people opposed that decision by 90%, so it is dishonest to say that the people are obligated to repay that money. Indeed since that repayment is being demanded as higher taxes, CNN is proposing taxation without representation (if not outright fascism). In the little school I went to in Loudon, New Hampshire I was taught that taxation without representation is a valid reason to fire the government!

See WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NATIONAL DEBT?

States negotiating immunity for banks over foreclosures

State attorneys general are negotiating to give major banks wide immunity over irregularities in handling foreclosures, even as evidence has emerged that banks are continuing to file questionable documents.

Excess Liquidity (the FED Printing Money) is Pumping up Commodity Prices, Raising the price of Gasoline and Food for average American Citizens and Reducing their Purchasing Power.

Experts: US Economic System Near ‘Collapse’

Pessimism over the United States’ economic outlook ruled as speakers last week took the stage at the annual FreedomFest in Las Vegas, reports HumanEvents.com. With the Aug. 2 deadline looming for a decision on the federal debt ceiling, speakers painted a grim picture of things to come.

So It Begins ... Chicago Mercantile Exchange Slashes Value of Treasury Bills, Citing Volatility

As Zeke Miller and Yves Smith note, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has announced that it will give less credit for U.S. treasury bills and foreign sovereign debt posted as collateral.

This could be the first tangible effect of weakening U.S. credit.

"Official CPI Is Running 3.6%, But If It Were Still Calculated The Way It Was Before The Greenspan Commission Went To Work, It Would Be 11.1%"

Whatever agreement emerges from the backroom dealing [on the debt], it is now almost sure to include what we’ve labeled a “stealth default” on Social Security.
The White House quietly put out the word two weeks ago that it’s on board. Congressional Republicans think it’s a super idea, too. “There hasn’t been any economist anywhere that says we shouldn’t do that,” says Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).

Of course, they don’t call it a stealth default. They call it “chained CPI.”

This stealth default has occurred before. When Social Security was in trouble in 1983, one of the Greenspan Commission’s fixes included an adjustment to the consumer price index known as “substitution.”http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

"Whatever agreement emerges from the backroom dealing [on the debt], it is now almost sure to include what we’ve labeled a “stealth default” on Social Security."

"Gee, I hate being right all the time!" -- Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

Prostitution ring for Wall Street clients busted

The prostitution service, named High Class NY, was run 24 hours a day out of an office in Brooklyn and charged from $400 to $3,600 an hour for its services, according to the 144-count indictment. It also provided customers with cocaine and other narcotics, the indictment said.

Hynes said clients often spent in excess of $10,000 in a single night.

They were "all high-end customers coming from the financial markets. People with nothing but money," he said.

Remember what I said about money-addiction and how the Wall Street CEOs behind the mortgage-backed security fraud were living like drug lords?

I wonder if they were using bailout money for these parties.

Obama raising even MORE cash from Wall St. than in 2008

Taxpayers lose $1.3 billion as govt. exits Chrysler

U.S. taxpayers likely lost $1.3 billion in the government bailout of Chrysler, the Treasury Department announced Thursday.

"Hey, it's not like it's my own money I am spending!" -- Official White Horse Souse

Chrysler (Fiat) CEO Tells CNN: "U.S.Taxpayers Are Getting A Phenomenal Deal By Losing ONLY $1.3 Billion On Bailout"

Chrysler CEO speaks with CNN - What a smug bastard.

Govt to lose $14B of auto bailout funds

The Obama administration said Wednesday that the government will lose about $14 billion in taxpayer funds from the bailout of the U.S. auto industry.

In a report from the president's National Economic Council, officials said that figure is down from the 60 percent the Treasury Department originally estimated the government would lose following its $80 billion bailout of Chrysler and General Motors in 2009.

Government Motors collected $17 million from Tennessee for jobs, then left

Report shows Nov 2008 GM took $17M in grants from Tennessee to develop jobs and train workers at the Spring Hill plant. Less than 1 year later GM moved those jobs out of state.

Horror for US Economy as Data Falls off Cliff

The last month has been a horror show for the U.S. economy, with economic data falling off a cliff, according to Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London.

"It seems that almost every bit of data about the health of the US economy has disappointed expectations recently," said Riddell, in a note sent to CNBC on Wednesday.

"US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing."

The financial avarice of the global banking system – U.S. banks insolvent to the tune of $3 trillion. FDIC pretends to have funds to support over $7 trillion in banking deposits.

Part of the big delusion in our banking system is the reality that debt has become a large source of money flowing through the economy. This is why housing made the perfect vessel for Wall Street and banking speculation. Banks create money by issuing loans and there is nothing larger to loan on than a home. Think about the fact that banks were giving out $500,000 for trashy run down homes overrun with rats and this was something that they were booking on their balance sheet as an asset.

Largest Banks Profited by Borrowing From Federal Reserve, Lending to Federal Government

Source: Huffington Post

A newly-released study from the Congressional Research Service bolsters claims that the nation's largest banks profited off the Federal Reserve's financial crisis-era programs by borrowing cash for next to nothing, then lending it back to the federal government at substantially higher rates.

The report reinforces long-held beliefs that the banking system in essence engaged in taxpayer-financed arbitrage: They got money for free, then lent it back to Uncle Sam while collecting juicy returns. Left out of the equation are the millions of everyday borrowers, like households and small businesses, who were unable to secure loans needed to tide them over until the crisis ended.

Are you angry yet?!?

Because you should be, particularly if you were desperately trying to prop up a small business during this time period, and were either denied loans, or could only look at loans which would be next to impossible to pay off, because of the usurious fees attached.

And of course, the people responsible for this will never be tried, and never go to jail, because there is a real two-tiered system of justice in this country; one for the very wealthy, and one for everyone else.

Pentagon lands extra $50 billion out of debt deal

Out of a bill that was supposed to cut government spending and waste wherever it is found, lawmakers managed to cobble together an additional $50 billion for the U.S. Defense Department's budget, using an accounting trick to disguise the move.

Instead of cutting $400 billion from the Pentagon's budget over the next 12 years like President Barack Obama proposed in April, Republicans put their own cuts at $350 billion over the next 13 years, leaving the nation's defense apparatus an extra $50 billion it hadn't planned on.

Unflipping believable.

WAKE UP AMERICA! - The Real U.S. Budget Problem: Defense & War Spending Equal 94% Of All Federal Income Tax Revenues

What's missing from the debt-ceiling discussion, albeit nothing new to DB readers, is spending on wars and the pentagon. It's not even being mentioned as a possibility in any of the competing debt plans, despite the following undeniably depressing and disgusting facts:

From Reddit:

I thought this kind of puts things in perspective. In 2010, the US government collected $898 billion in federal income tax revenues. The same year, we spent $847 billion on useless wars and national defense. That means that 94% of all federal income tax revenue is equivalent to what we spend on the Pentagon. Who out there thinks it was money well spent?

Also, just to piss you off a little bit more - defense spending is equivalent to 443% of what we collect in total corporate taxes.

One more link you need to see:

• Taking Apart The 2011 Federal Budget - Washington Post Graphic

Bernie Sanders "Military Budget Has Tripled Since 1997, But Obama Won't Do A Damn Thing About It!"

Bernie Sanders with Keith Olbermann.

The Pentagon Rules America: Militarism and the Crisis of the Civilian Economy

One reason the U.S. fell behind, Melman explained, is that “about 30 percent of the nation's engineers, scientists and technicians work directly or indirectly for the military. The loss to the civilian economy is incalculable.” Consumer electronics, he said, “declined dramatically while the Government employs thousands of electronic engineers in its military labs.”

That was true when Melman spoke and it is true today. We have an army of death scientists toiling away in germ warfare labs ($50 billion wasted on this nauseating research alone since 9/11), in space warfare labs, in nuclear warfare labs, in electronic warfare labs, as well as in labs specializing in conventional ways to kill people.

Melman said one reason for the continuing dominance of the MIC is that the U.S. “is now a military form of state capitalism in which top managers of the military forces and their economy have dominant power---economic, political and military.” Translation: the Pentagon rules!

The USA Is Broke But Can Afford 737 U.S. Military Bases And 2-1/2 Million Troops Around The World

But you are going to be forced to "sacrifice" the Social Security money you paid into the government, which they cannot afford to pay back.

War, devastation, and who’s cashing in on them

Profiting vs. Profiteering
War, devastation, and who’s cashing in on them
By Shindu Parameswaran
June 11, 2011
Unfortunately, profiteering from war is only a subset of the problem. Profiteering from devastated countries hit by earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes and so on is also prevalent in the contemporary world. . . .
With various natural disasters happening from month to month and from year to year, it provides companies the opportunity to profit from the distress faced by the casualty nations of such disasters. One such example is the profiteering activities by corporations after Hurricane Katrina

Lieberman Says We Need To Cut Social Security To Pay For Defense

Israel's whores in Congress plan to steal what is left of old Americans' retirements to send young Americans to die attacking Israel's enemies, all on the basis of lies and deceptions. George B. Bush has admitted on video tape that the US is attacking nations that did not have anything at all to do with 9-11. It's just a pathetic excuse for Lyin' Joe Lieberman to justify stiffing the American people for the Social Security THEY ALREADY PAID FOR, which the US Government borrowed and now chooses not to pay back!

John Boehner Says In Order To Pay For The Wars, We Need To Raise The Social Security Retirement Age To 70

This needs to be seen in light of Lieberman's outrageous comments on the Senate floor yesterday regarding the need to cut Social Security in order to pay for Wars & Offensive Military Action.

Has the U.S. Congress gone insane.

US House C'ttee Saves Israeli Aid in Foreign Aid Cut

The US House Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday cut the Obama administration's $51 billion 2012 budget request for the State Department and foreign aid by $6.4 billion, but kept unchanged the $3 billion in military aid for Israel.

US voices 'strong commitment' to Israel

The United States has once again reiterated its “unshakable commitment to Israel's security” during meetings between top US officials and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Washington.

Meanwhile, the US Government prepares to drop the losses from the Wall Street bailouts onto ordinary Americans.

Israel sells US F-15 fighter engines to China (by mistake)

"We thought those were clothes dryers! Honest! We are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO embarrassed! Really. Honest!"

$50-$60 Billion Laundered from US/other nonprofits into illegal West Bank colonies creates threat of terrorism backlash

The following document case file reveals the failure of US law enforcement agencies to act on credible, specific public and private allegations that up to $60 billion has been laundered from the United States and other sources into illegal colonization of the West Bank. The US national security interest in averting another 9/11style attack motivated by this type of ongoing illegal activity continues to be high. The Jewish Agency was identified in the 1960's as a source of $35 million illegally laundered into the United States for stealth grassroots action, PR and lobbying. In 2005 the Jewish Agency was again identified at the center of an international money laundering ring—building settlements that are illegal, according to Israeli prosecutor Talia Sasson.

Lockheed Martin Wins $72 Million Contract To Install Body Scanners

Even as the US economy teeters on the brink of default, the federal government has handed a $72 million dollar contract to defense contractor Lockheed Martin to install radiation-firing body scanners at 300 more airports across the east and central United States, despite the availability of devices that do not rely on radiation to function.

OUTRAGE - Microsoft Uses Loopholes To Pay JUST 7% U.S. Corporate Tax

And yet there is no move in Congress to close ANY of the loopholes.

The official corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 35% by the way.

Bernie Sanders: The Top Ten U.S. Corporate Tax Avoiders

You won't believe some of these outrageous numbers - Video added of Sanders on the Senate floor ripping everyone from Goldman Sachs to Exxon.

Sanders compiled a list of some of some of the 10 worst corporate income tax avoiders.

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent.

The Tent City of New Jersey: Desperate victims of the economic slump forced to live in makeshift homes in forest

In scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression these are the ramshackle homes of the desperate and destitute U.S. families who have set up their own 'Tent City' only an hour from Manhattan.

This is YOUR future America.The photos you see below (published in the BRITISH media, not the American) are where the US Government plans for all of you to live, because they will gladly loot the last penny from your pocket before they admit to the fatal flaw at the heart of the private central bank issuing the public currency at interest, which is that the moment the first printed note goes into circulation, more money is owed to the private central bank than actually exists, and everything the government or the banks do to increase the money supply also increases the debt to that much greater a degree! Space constraints prevent me from going into details, so I suggest you read "The Eleventh Marble" to understand why all of you will soon be living like these people.

"When they have nothing left to lose, is when men are their bravest!" -- Michael Rivero

"When peaceful revolution becomes impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable!" -- John F. Kennedy

Prospect Park Wildlife Threatened By Poachers

A group of homeless people have been camping out beside the Prospect Park lake for the last two months and hunting small game for food, reports the Post. The poachers stuck to the lake's southern end, where they littered the area with cans and trash and killed "wildlife" like squirrels, ducks, and cygnets using quite cruel methods. They roasted the meat over illegal fires or just ate it raw. Disgusting! Barbaric!

Excuse me? The only barbarians are the Wall Street crooks whose fraudulent mortgage-backed securities scam crashed the economy and MADE these people homeless and forced to hunt small animals to eat. Let's get our perspective back. These homeless people are HUMAN BEINGS!! What is a squirrel? It's just a rat with a cute fluffy tail! Just because you hate yourself is no reason for us to hate all humans, Rosie, especially those made homeless through no fault of their own!

Now America warns troops they might not be paid as debt stand-off threatens to plunge world economies back into recession

Troops fighting in Afghanistan have been told that the Obama administration is expected to make their salaries a lower priority than interest payments to foreign bond-holders.

Give Us Your Money, Suckers — U.S. Government Requesting Public Donations To Help Pay The Debt

The U.S government has put up a page provided by the Department of The Treasury to accept donations to pay down the public debt.

The federal government has put a form online to accept donations from the public which reads:

Home > Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt

Welcome to the United States Treasury’s site for making donations to help reduce the public debt. If you would like to make a donation, please fill in the required fields and click the Submit Data button when completed.

[...]

Source: Pay.Gov

Almost $2 million has been donated by Americans to help deal with the crisis.

The U.S government is currently soliciting donations from members of the public to help combat the current debt crisis through the use of an online form provided by the Department of The Treasury.

So let me get this straight.

They stole our money to give the wall street bankers $16 trillion in secret bailouts and $9 Trillion has disappeared from the Fed.

When it was time to bail out the taxpayer they let wall street run mortgage foreclosure mills all over the country and instead of prosecuting the fraud they have allowed it to continue for years.

Instead they have made it official policy not to prosecute fraud.

In fact states are negotiating deals to give the crooks immunity.

They have spent trillions of dollars on illegal overseas wars for oil and drugs.

They hand over hundreds of billions to spy on us creating a domestic spy program that has grown beyond our worst nightmares.

They have stolen trillions from Social Security and are conducting secret talks to chop Social Security, Medicare and Public Education

They have repeatedly violated our civil rights, censor us , beat us, torture us, kidnap us, call us terrorists, target us for assassination, and detain us indefinitely with no charge in overseas torture camps.

And now they have the nerve to put their hands outs and ask the taxpayers for a bailout.

Go Ahead Suckers, give them your money….

Pole Dancing Class For 7-Year-Olds Slammed

Family campaigners have blasted a British fitness group for teaching pole dancing to girls aged seven -- and putting pictures of them on the internet.

The photos show youngsters upside down on poles dressed in shorts, crop tops and vests.

I guess the new British social order is that little boys grow up to be killers in uniform and little girls grow up to be strippers out of uniform!

Desperate! Bizarre! McConnell & Reid Propose New Legislative Body: 'Super Congress' to Deal With Debt Ceiling!

Debt ceiling negotiators think they've hit on a solution to address the debt ceiling impasse and the public's unwillingness to let go of benefits such as Medicare and Social Security that have been earned over a lifetime of work: Create a new Congress.

This "Super Congress," composed of members of both chambers and both parties, isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but would be granted extraordinary new powers. Under a plan put forth by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his counterpart Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), legislation to lift the debt ceiling would be accompanied by the creation of a 12-member panel made up of 12 lawmakers -- six from each chamber and six from each party.

This article is correct. The Constitution does not provide for such a sham. This group of 12 will do the dirty work so that the rest of Congress can evade the wrath of the voters in 2012. No doubt the 6 Senators will not be up for re-election in 2012 while the 6 house members will either be impossible to defeat or predicted to lose anyway no matter what they do.

Time for the tar and feathers.

Opponents Of Debt Hike to be Barred From “Super Congress”

According to The Weekly Standard, Republican sources have confirmed that the likes of Rand Paul, Jim DeMint and other fiscal conservatives will be dismissed as choices for the new super committee partly as a punishment for their failure to back the debt hike and most importantly to prevent any obstacles to the committee passing tax hikes and entitlement cuts.

"prevent any obstacles to the committee passing tax hikes and entitlement cuts."

Ron Paul Sounds Alarm on “Disturbing” Super Congress

Congressman Ron Paul warns that the all-powerful new “Super Congress” created by the vote on the debt ceiling will be used to fast-track tax increases while concentrating more power over the nation’s purse strings in the hands of the Washington elite.

The "Super-Congress" is a blatant attempt to create a ruling body immune to being influenced by the voters. This is not only unconstitutional it is contrary to the intention of the nation's founders to have a government vested with taxation powers that is not subordinate to the will of the people. The Super-Congress won't fast-track tax increases because Obama promised he would not increase taxes as part of the debt deal, and we all know how well Obama keeps his promises. But the President nor the Congress never said anything about not piling loads of newly created taxes on all of you such as the VAT Pelosi is already talking about or the Carbon Tax which will be on the Super-Congress' agenda right from the start!

Do you get it yet? Despite the no tax increase promise, Obama HAS to take that $2.4 trillion out of your pocket some way, or the printing of new money by Bernanke will lower the value of the dollar, which will trigger a ratings downgrade, which will throw the US Government into default.

Default is inevitable because there IS NO ELEVENTH MARBLE! The entire US financial system, based on public currency issued as a loan from a private bank at interest, is a giant pyramid scheme and like all pyramid schemes is doomed to eventual collapse. All you can do is decide whether you will allow yourself to be dragged down with the US Government, or cut your losses and save what is left of your life while you still can. Because in the end, nothing you can do, no sacrifice you make, will save this flawed system. And even of by some miracle your sacrifice pulls this government back from the brink, you will still be lining under a government so terrified of you that it must read your emails, listen to your phone calls, scan your computers, fondle you at the airports, and taser you at random to make sure you know your place in the grander scheme of things!

The "Super-Congress" is designed to allow the government to do what it wants without ever letting the voters have a say in these decisions.

"When peaceful revolution becomes impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable." -- John F. Kennedy

Super Congress Getting Even More Super Powers In Debt Deal

Under the new proposal, if the new legislative body, made up of six Democrats and six Republicans from both chambers, doesn't come up with a bill that cuts at least $1.5 trillion by Thanksgiving, entitlement programs will automatically be slashed.

"entitlement programs will automatically be slashed.

entitlement programs will automatically be slashed.

entitlement programs will automatically be slashed.”

Do you get it yet? Have you been listening to what I have been trying to warn you about? The US Government is already in default. They cannot pay their bills, and they are planning to default on the American people in order to pay the bankers!

A Super Congress is NOT Constitutional! The Congress has NO Right to make a Super Congress! We the People NEED To Stand up and say NO

I don't know if there is anyway WE THE PEOPLE can take back what the Idiots who only watch out for the banks and corporations do!

The Congress and Senate HAVE NO RIGHT TO FORM A SUPER CONGRESS! It is NOT in our Constitution!

The Super Congress than makes the rest of the elected officials (even though they are all bought and sold by the highest bidders of banks and corporations) irrelevant.

We the People Need to stand up for what is right and what is wrong in what the government is now doing!

Super Congress: the final nail in the coffin of representative democracy and freedom as we know it

Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Cloaked in the fear surrounding the debt ceiling and a possible default is the most dangerous legislation that America has ever faced. If this passes, the Super Congress will make the PATRIOT Act look like a just and fair law. When six Republicans, six Democrats and the President have complete control over the legislature, we need to be concerned.

The most frightening aspect of this proposed “committee”, inaccurate though the term may be, is the fact that lawmakers in Washington have already openly admitted the unprecedented power they will be afforded.

Referring to the Super Congress as a committee is a bit deceitful. Calling it a Supreme Council of Overlords would be a bit more accurate...

Rothschild Bank AND Goldman Sachs Are Both On The LIST Of Bondholders Getting U.S. Taxpayer Billions In Ireland

Complete list of bondholders inside, and BBC footage of Sir Eveylyn de Rothschild.

Economic Stimulus: Military-led Investigation Concludes U.S. Taxpayer $2.16 Billion Funneled to Taliban Under Transportation Contract

A year-long military-led investigation has concluded that U.S. taxpayer money has been indirectly funneled to the Taliban under a $2.16 billion transportation contract that the United States has funded in part to promote Afghan businesses.

"Dear Ma - Sorry the bank took our house because the Government exported all of our jobs overseas to bring about this engineered economic collapse and capitalizing on Wall Street's fraudulent mortgage backed securities, needing our houses to balance their books, needing real assets, not fake paper money printed out of thin air. Those bankers needed that $144 billion christmas bonus last year for all the hard work they do...."

Eric Sprott - We’re Headed Over a Cliff, Be Wary of Paper Assets

With continued gold and silver volatility, the Dow breaking below 12,000 and the US dollar on the move, today King World News interviewed billionaire Eric Sprott, Chairman of Sprott Asset Management. When asked about year over year explosions in the price of corn 118%, wheat 71%, cotton 83%, sugar 61% and coffee 96%, Sprott replied, “Well I always chuckle when people at the Fed and the Treasury suggest there are no signs of inflation. There are nothing but signs of inflation, not withstanding the Fed suggesting the CPI is up one or two percent.

Anger at government highest in 19 years: poll

Dissatisfaction and anger with the federal government are at a nearly 20-year high, according to the results of a new ABC News/Washington Post poll released Wednesday.

When asked how they felt about the federal government, 80 percent of poll respondents said that they felt dissatisfied or even angry about the work the government is doing. The last time such a peak of ill will was felt was during 1992's economic slump, under President George Bush's leadership.

Inside Job Director Charles Ferguson With Charlie Rose: "It's A Wall Street Government"

Interview was recorded two days before the Oscar win for Inside Job.

"The systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry..."

Economics Professor: "[We’ll Have] a Never-Ending Depression Unless We Repudiate the Debt, Which Never Should Have Been Extended In The First Place"

Preface: Regular debts which are knowingly and honestly incurred should be repaid. This essay focuses solely on debts which are involuntarily incurred by politicians at the expense of the American people - and which do not benefit the public, but only a handful of bankers and defense contractors - and debts based upon false promises.

Economists: The Economy Can Only Recover If We Repudiate the Debt

Leading Austrian-school economist Murray Rothbard - an American - wrote in 1992:

I propose ... out-right debt repudiation. Consider this question: why should the poor, battered citizens of Russia or Poland or the other ex-Communist countries be bound by the debts contracted by their former Communist masters? In the Communist situation, the injustice is clear: that citizens struggling for freedom and for a free-market economy should be taxed to pay for debts contracted by the monstrous former ruling class. But this injustice only differs by degree from "normal" public debt. For, conversely, why should the Communist government of the Soviet Union have been bound by debts contracted by the Czarist government they hated and overthrew? And why should we, struggling American citizens of today, be bound by debts created by a ... ruling elite who contracted these debts at our expense?

***

Murray Rothbard is correct: The only solution is to hit the reset button on the nation, and to tell the money junkies that there is no 11th marble for them to take from us, and there never was.

It is time for the money-junkies, the media, and the government know that we see the design flaw, and we refuse to sail on their sinking ship, or use their shaky bridge any longer.

The Party Is Over For Bankers

The end of the banker’s reign is near and that is a really good thing. Up to this point, bankers have managed to turn humanity into pile of debt slaves.

Since the advent of paper money, bankers have tended to form an unholy alliance with elected governments to expand debt and both parties have prospered until now; the time has come when debt can no longer be repaid.

Darryl Robert Schoon writes, “The global economic collapse is perhaps humanity’s greatest hope for escaping the debt slavery the world’s financiers and bankers have planned for the world.

However, to escape slavery one must first know he is a slave.”

Guardian: U.K. Being Swept By Movement To Remove The Elite Bankers And Media Barrons From Power

The U.K. is being swept by a movement to strip power from a small group of elite bankers and media barons whose "private interests have bankrupted and corrupted the public realm"

Lansdowne Partners sells entire $850m stake in Goldman Sachs

Lansdowne Partners, Europe's biggest hedge fund, has sold its entire $850m (£517m) position in Goldman Sachs in a move that underlines growing concerns about the prospects for the global banking sector.

They must have figured out that Lloyd Blankfein really isn't doing God's work!

6 Steps by the IMF for a One-World Currency

In mainstream financial circles, the concept of a global currency is often spoken of only with an atmosphere of caution. It is approached always in hypothetical terms. It is whispered of as some far off dream; a socio-economic moon landing in the far reaches of fiscal space. Perhaps in 2015, or 2020, or maybe 2050, but certainly never just over the horizon, or right around the corner posing as an innocuous trade asset created over 40 years ago and used only on rare occasions. Unfortunately, the development of a centralized global security representing the creation of a supranational economic body is much closer than many would care to admit…

UN declares first famine in Africa for three decades as US withholds aid

US aid spending in Somalia has fallen by 88 per cent, from more than £150m in 2008 to £13m this year.

Horn of Africa Drought - Imperialism at Work - Thomas Mountain

Thomas Mountain lives in Eritrea - and reports that the West is funding the Ethiopian Military's food blockade.

The Greatest Depression Has Only Begun

As the mainstream media is finally catching on to the reality of the mirage of the so-called "recovery", reports are surfacing about a dire global economic situation:

Folks, please remember to continue to be "7 Day Awarists" as this unfolds.

If you have an account at a "big box" store, or if you are adept at couponing, please be sure to pick up extra goods every time you make that trip.

Also, if there are medications critical to your family's health, try to get as much of that ahead of any major disruption.

Believe me, I don't want to be "Mrs. Chicken Little of Hawaii, 2011"; but watching this slow-motion train wreck of bad economic news, brought about by lousy economic planning and thinking (not to mention the horrendous culpability of the Federal Reserve), I think it doesn't hurt to be as prepared as possible for any eventuality.

Turkey Bank Moves to Stem Lira Losses, Cancels Dollar Buying

Turkey’s central bank moved to stem a slump in the lira, suspending daily purchases of dollars and cutting the cost of long-term deposits in foreign exchange.

There may be more here than meets the eye. Turkey is ramping up the diplomatic campaign against Israel over Israel's refusal to apologize for the murder of Turkish citizens in international waters last year. Israel maintains their "They had it coming" policy and shows their usual hard-headedness in refusing to compromise.

But Turkey also knows that the United States hovers at the edge of banker-induced financial collapse, and when the collapse comes, Israel will be stripped of its primary military resource, as Israel will never send their own children to die on their wars. That sort of dirty work is, as Gene Simmons puts it, what the gentiles are for!

So Turkey stops buying dollars, which pushes the US Government one step closer to collapse, the result of which will be an Israel left defenseless against all those nations they went out of their way to piss off over the last 60 years.

Corporate Water World

Pharmaceutical giant Merck has become the most recent multinational corporation to endorse the United Nations CEO Water Mandate, an initiative that was awarded the Public Eye Greenwash Award. Public Eye described the Mandate as a club of corporations that profit financially from water as a primary resource while exhibiting "irresponsible and damaging behavior." Merck is just the latest corporation to join the ranks of Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, and a host of other environmental offenders...

The Federal Reserve ADMITS that Its 12 Banks Are PRIVATE - Not Government - Entities

Much of the tens of trillions in bailout money and "easy" money from quantitative easing went to foreign banks (and see this, this and this).

Indeed, Ron Paul noted recently that one-third of all fed bailout loans - and essentially 100% of loans from the New York Fed - went to foreign banks.

The New York Fed is the most important Fed bank. As Bloomberg pointed out in 2009:

The New York Fed is one of 12 regional Federal Reserve banks and the one charged with monitoring capital markets. It is also managing $1.7 trillion [now up to at least $1.9 trillion] of emergency lending programs [and accepting collateral from the banks in return].

However, the country's most powerful "agency" - the Federal Reserve - is actually no more federal than Federal Express. The Fed itself admitted (via Bloomberg):

While the Fed’s Washington-based Board of Governors is a federal agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act and other government rules, the New York Fed and other regional banks maintain they are separate institutions, owned by their member banks, and not subject to federal restrictions.

For that reason, the New York Fed alleged in the lawsuit brought by Bloomberg to force the Fed to reveal some information about its loans - Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan) - that it was not subject to Federal Freedom of Information Act. As Bloomberg reported in a separate article:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York ... runs most of the lending programs. Most documents relevant to [a freedom of information lawsuit filed by Bloomberg news] are at the New York Fed, which isn’t subject to FOIA law, according to the central bank. The Board of Governors has 231 pages of documents, to which it is denying access under an exemption for trade secrets.

As the long-time Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee (Charles McFadden) said on June 10, 1932:

Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies ....

Similarly, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) - often called the "central banks' central bank", as it coordinates transactions between central banks, and which is the entity determining the level of reserves banks are required to keep worldwide - is itself owned by the central banks of the world.

As Spiegel reported in 2009:

The BIS is a closed organization owned by the 55 central banks. The heads of these central banks travel to the Basel headquarters once every two months, and the General Meeting, the BIS's supreme executive body, takes place once a year.

In, other words, the private banks own the Fed (and mos other central banks), and the central banks - in turn - own BIS, the global bank regulator.

Interestingly, Spiegel points out that BIS is largely immune from regulation, oversight or taxes:

Formally registered as a stock corporation, it is recognized as an international organization and, therefore, is not subject to any jurisdiction other than international law.

It does not need to pay tax, and its members and employees enjoy extensive immunity. No other institution regulates the BIS, despite the fact that it manages about 4 percent of the world's total currency reserves, or €217 trillion ($304 trillion), as well as 120 tons of gold...

Central bankers are not elected by the people but are appointed by their governments. Nevertheless, they wield power that exceeds that of many political leaders. Their decisions affect entire economies, and a single word from their lips is capable of moving financial markets. They set interest rates, thereby determining the cost of borrowing and the speed of global financial currents.

Max Keiser: Financial Terrorists are "Raping Everybody...Revolt Now or Be a Debt Slave"

International bankers have reportedly wasted billions of dollars invested by Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi. The Financial Times says giants like Goldman Sachs were dealing with the dictator's investments when it needed to plug a hole during the economic crisis. Most of the money has been lost, but with what's going on in Libya any repayment seems unlikely.

The Magna Carta: Full Text at British Library

10. If one who has borrowed from the Jews any sum, great or small, die before that loan can be repaid, the debt shall not bear interest while the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt fall into our hands, we will not take anything except the principal sum contained in the bond.

Even the Magna Carta condemned banking usury. Significantly, the version of the Magna Carta at the US National Archives omits this provision, and does not even mention that the American people are looking at a redacted text.

Escaping the Clutches of the Financial Markets

Trouble is brewing all over Europe. Young people with little hope for the future are protesting in Spain. In France, 1.4 million copies were sold of a manifesto titled "Be Outraged." Young Frenchmen and -women are devising utopias that extend well beyond civil society because they no longer expect anything from it. A deep depression has descended upon Greece, combined with a rage directed at politicians and the rest of Europe.

In Germany, this is what politicians are hearing from their citizens today: "You spent billions to rescue the banks, and now I'm supposed to be footing the bill? Forget it!" Hardly anyone is willing to put up with their politicians any more. And German leaders have lost support -- and some of their own legitimacy.

Citizen Sues Atlanta Fed Based on Allegation that It's Issuing Federal Reserve Notes That It Has No Intention of Redeeming, Which Amounts to Counterfeiting ... Asks that Atlanta Fed's Charter be Forfeited

Scott Beach sent me this link to his complaint against the Atlanta Fed.

In his complaint, Beach points out that 12 United States Code Section 341 provides that Federal Reserve Banks can be sued, and can that they can:

Forfeit [their] franchise for violation of law.

The complaint alleges that all of the Federal Reserve Banks (including Atlanta) stopped allowing Federal Reserve Notes to be redeemed in the early 2000's and that - because 12 United States Code Section 411 requires the notes to be redeemable - continuing to issue notes without allowing redemption amounts to counterfeiting.

Beach thus asks that the Atlanta Fed's charter be forfeited.

Bank Of Ireland To Impose 90% Losses On Bondholders

Finally, a lone bright moment of anti-bankster sanity appears on the horizon.

Putin says U.S. is "parasite" on global economy

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States Monday of living beyond its means "like a parasite" on the global economy and said dollar dominance was a threat to the financial markets.

"They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy," Putin told the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi while touring its lakeside summer camp some five hours drive north of Moscow.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE CONSTITUTION, ARTICLE 1 SECTION 8

The Congress shall have Power ...

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof...

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

Why are we even talking about a debt ceiling? Why is the Congress debating borrowing more money at interest from a private bank that simply prints it up when the US Government has the legal right to create their own money free of interest charges?

And note that the Constitution limits war funding to two years maximum. How long have we been in Afghanistan?

ABCNNBBCBSFOX, The Public Message Is NOT Mixed!

Abraham Lincoln said that the proper role of government is to do for the community that which the community needs and wants but cannot do for itself. That the US Government has exceeded that role by a huge margin is obvious, and what is equally obvious is that the corporate media is guilty of the sin of omissions in that it did not ask the really pertinent questions in their polls, in order to manufacture an artificial sense of confusion behind which the US Government can do what it wants while pretending not to be able to deduce the will of the people.

The will of the people is obvious, and simple. The money you take from the people must be spent on the people, for those things that the people want and need, and for nothing else.

Going Beyond Left And Right To The Anti-Banker Party Platform

We will abolish the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration and Threat Fusion Centers. We will go through the list of 850,000 DHS and other agencies employees plus their contractors who spy on Americans and fire almost all of them. We will make it illegal to grope anyone who is not under arrest and has not given probable cause of an imminent threat to public safety. The naked body scanners will be permanently banned as a threat to public health. We will abolish both the No Fly and the Slow Fly Lists.

We will immediately repeal the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Acts of 2006 and 2009 and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act. The business of America is freedom.

Leaderless Resistance

I first became aware of Leaderless Resistance in a very unusual place, the military. Most military are known for their top down, hierarchical, centralized power structure. This system has proven to be the best way to manage huge amounts of energy and personnel towards a common enemy. This structure has a weakness, in that it is slow to react to knew threats. Centralized power also becomes very predictable, since it must train its people in advance to do everything according to plan. This also stifles innovation or initiative, which leads to decay and collapse.

Every successful insurgency, from the American Revolution to Vietnam to Afghanistan, involved refusing to fight the war the tyrant was prepared to fight, knowing that the rigid military structure of the enemy inherently prevented them from adapting rapidly to an unconventional threat. The constant presentation of new forms of warfare negated the material and organizational advantage of the mercenary armies, wore them down, and ultimately defeated them.